Stanley Tookie Williams

Stanley Tookie Williams III was born on December 29, 1953 in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the age of six he moved to South Central's West Side neighborhood in Los Angeles. He was known as a fighter and running the streets of South Central's Westside. He attended John C. Freemont High School but was expelled and never graduated.

The Crips started when the Baby Avenues were formed by Ray Washington in 1969. Tookie joined him in 1971 and formed the West side portion of what is now known as the Crips. The Crips were initially started to eliminate all street gangs and create a strong neighborhood watch. Tookie said "we started out to, in a senseÐ'--address all of the so-called neighboring gangs in the area and I thought I could cleanse the neighborhood of all these marauding gangs. But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing."

In 1979 Williams was convicted of two separate robbery/murders. The first was at a 7-Eleven near Whittier, California. Here 26 year old Albert Owens was murdered. Tookie and two others entered the store and pulled out a sawed off shot gun from under his jacket. He told Albert Owens to "Shut up and keep walking" while pointing the gun in Owen's back. Records show that Tookie shot out a security monitor and then shot Owens twice in the back at point blank range. He and the two others netted approximately 120$ in the Robbery.

The second was at the Brook Haven Motel in South Central, LA. Here the Yang family, who ran and managed the Motel, were murdered. According to transcripts Tookie entered the Motel and located the private office where the Yang's were sleeping. Inside the office he shot and killed the father, Yen Yi by close range shots one to the abdomen, one under the left arm, and the last to chest. Tsai- Shai, the Mother, received two close range shots to her tail bone and abdomen. Lastly, the daughter Yu Chin Lin was shot once in the upper facial region. The incident only netted approximately 100$.

In 1981 Stanley Tookie Williams was convicted of all four murders. He was also convicted of robbery, cases of Botched robbery and the use of a personal firearm in the commission of the crimes. The jury recommended the Death Penalty and the judge accepted the recommendation and sentenced him to death.

Once he was sent to jail he got put in solitary confinement and remained there for 6 and a half years. He then started on his great path to Redemption. He wrote several children's books advocating non-violence and positive alternatives to gangs. In 1997 he wrote and posted an apology on his website for forming the Crips. Tookie Williams was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year from 2001 to 2005. Nominations came from a member of the Swiss Parliament and four times by Notre Dame University Philosophy and Religion Professor. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by a Brown University Professor of English Literature.

Then, in 2004 he helped broker a peace agreement called, The Tookie Protocol for Peace, for what